


It's not love that hurts but ourselves

by raspberrylimonade



Series: remember i love you (stydia prompts) [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Romantic Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10018202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrylimonade/pseuds/raspberrylimonade
Summary: Lydia's been avoiding Stiles since the pack got him back from the Ghost Riders. When Stiles gets hurt during lacrosse practice, however, the worried banshee lets some things slip.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to a few prompts:
> 
> \- Lydia pretends not to notice Stiles while Stiles tries to get Lydia to notice him. This game goes on all day until Lacrosse practice where things takes on a painful twist. (tumblr)
> 
> \- After the Ghost Riders ordeal, Stiles gets hurt during lacrosse practice not bad but enough for Lydia to go crazy. Overwhelmed with worry, Lydia burst out that she loves him something she hadn’t done until now. (tumblr)
> 
> \- they first meet after Lydia remembers everything about him(comment from ffn)

They go to school as if that’s what they’ve always done. As if that’s all they’ve ever done. Attend school, and not miss classes because of supernatural disasters. Like they are normal teenagers.

Everyone around them is acting normal too, as if they weren’t all just released from a state of non-existence. No, Beacon Hills remains blissfully unaware of the things that go bump in the night.

It feels strange, walking down the hallways and feeling every step through each and every one of his bones, knowing that this is real and _he_  is _real_. There was a time where he wondered if he would ever be more than a shell of his former self. Now he feels unnaturally solid, _present_.

And then he sees _her_ , about a dozen lockers away from him, and all his doubts about his existence float away, like a free balloon, never to be seen again.

It’s funny because before any of this happened, anything pertaining to Lydia Martin couldn’t have been more than a dream, yet now she grounds him in reality.

As if she senses his gaze on her, she turns, bright green eyes meeting his whisky pools. Her lips fold inward as their corners tug up, forming that shy smile he’s been fortunate to have seen more than once. She hugs her books to her chest and scurries to her next class.

Something in his chest sinks as she disappears into the crowd of students.

Lydia did not scurry, not un less something was wrong.

* * *

It was when he hugged her, long arms wrapped around her frame and shoulders hunched over her like a shield, when he whispered in her ear, _“You remembered,”_ did she realise:

She _didn’t_.

He asked her to remember and she didn’t.

She failed him.

* * *

He could always hear her.

Not Scott. Not his father. _Her_.

It wasn’t like the radio, where he could communicate directly with the real world. It was as if every time she spoke about him, he could hear her voice, echoing in the tunnels, permeating the endless white noise and listlessness of the train station.

He wondered if anyone else also heard voices. Perhaps not Lydia’s, but that of someone close to their heart. He wondered if he was the only one aware of his predicament. He wondered if it was because Lydia was his tether.

Most of all, he wondered if what he was hearing was true. That Lydia was looking for him in school. That she believed he existed and would put herself on the line to save him.

That she thought she loved him.

The sound of her voice had always varied in volume, but it was the loudest when she called him out of the rift. If you asked him, Stiles would have said he did not know how he knew where the rift would open up, he just followed her voice, that and the tugging sensation in his gut.

There was so much he wanted to say, wanted to ask, but he hadn’t. That night when he stumbled back into the real world, he had only managed to pull her close to him and whisper two words. Two words that held everything he wanted to say, but didn’t come close.

She sniffed in response and tucked her head into his neck.

* * *

When the sheriff had called them they were relieved. They thought they were the only ones left in Beacon Hills. Malia and Liam went to head off the ghost riders while Lydia and Scott rushed to the StIlinski residence.

The house was shaking.

They found the Sheriff in his son’s uncovered room, fully furnished, as Lydia had seen it.

But more astonishing was the rift opening up in the middle of the room. It was as if someone was ripping a hole in the fabric of reality. Bright light spilled through the tear, illuminating the sheriff’s face as he explained how the quaking started when he regained his memories of his son.

“It’s the memories,” Lydia had managed, panting as she struggled to stay upright. She held a death-grip on the ripped-up doorframe for support.

It was Scott, with his werewolf strength, who braced himself and slowly trekked into the room. He slowly turned, taking in the details, before his eyes settled on the desk.

He stumbled over, picked up a folder, and when he rifled through the contents the light spilling through the rift illuminated the tears in his eyes.

Lydia watched her alpha hunch over the table. She didn’t know if he was shaking because the room was shaking or because he was softly crying.

“He was looking…he wanted to find a place for us,” Scott choked out through sobs. “We were gonna get an apartment together…we were gonna…we were…”

He looked up, and Lydia couldn’t recall a time she had seen her alpha look so distraught.

“We were no one,” Scott whispered.

His eyes glazed over. The folder slipped from his fingers as his hand clenched around something invisible.

“Maybe I should just be no one again,” Scott murmured, trance-like.

Tears rolled down his cheeks. His breathing got heavier, and heavier, and then -

The rift split open, temporarily blinding them, and when they blinked their eyes and adjusted to the light, the shaking had stopped.

Scott slumped forward, and Lydia and the sheriff rushed forward to catch him.

“I remembered him,” Scott panted. “I remembered Stiles.”

“You finished opening the rift,” Lydia said softly.

The three of them turned towards the light.

“Stiles?” Scott called. 

Nothing.

“Stiles! Son are you there?” The sheriff asked, venturing a step closer towards the rift.

 _Stiles_ , Lydia pleaded silently, watching the two men call his name.

_Lydia?_

She gasped. She heard his voice in her head, clear as day.

“Stiles?”

Two heads turned towards her, and Lydia realised she had spoken out loud.

_Lydia where are you? I can hear you._

She felt a pull in her lower belly, causing her to push past Scott and the sheriff. That was when she saw it. Just a shadow, moving in front of the light.

“Stiles?” She called again. Her voice was high, quavering. Hopeful.

_Lydia._

She blinked, and the shadow wasn’t just a shadow, but the shape of a person, stumbling towards them.

“Stiles I can see you!” She gasped. Her hand reached out on its own volition.

“Stiles don’t stop! Keep going…Stiles - ”

_Lyds -_

And the light exploded.

* * *

It’s him.

He’s done something wrong, and she’s avoiding him.

He figured it out because he was waiting for her and Scott outside their AP Bio classroom, and she was talking to his best friend just fine. But when he joined them she mumbled - _mumbled_  - about having study session with Malia. So he and Scott went for lunch, where they were joined by…Malia.

She makes herself small, ducks her head and hides behind a curtain of hair. It reminds him of just over a year ago, when she was confused by her powers and felt out of place, keeping to herself, not wanting to be noticed.

She was hiding. From him.

 _She knows I want to talk to her_ , he thinks. _And she doesn’t want to talk about it._

He’s not going to push her. He has never pushed her, and he never will.

The sinking feeling in his chest just sinks even further.

* * *

She was falling backwards, only to be saved from landing on her back by Scott, and when her eyes adjusted the second time, someone was sobbing into the sheriff’s shoulder. Someone with a deep red flannel arm.

The person looked up. And Lydia’s heart stopped.

Stiles.

Behind her, Scott made a choked noise and launched himself at his friend. Stiles wrapped his arms around the wolf with equal fervour, the two sobbing and giggling and squeezing each other way too tight.

Just as in sync as they always were, the two boys (they might have been forced to become young men too fast, but when they were together they would always be boys) released each at other at the same time. Scott stepped aside. Leaving Lydia facing Stiles, nothing but space between them.

Stiles closed the space in two quick strides and wrapped his arms around her.

_“You remembered.”_

* * *

That was three weeks ago.

Three weeks, and she still remembers that night like it was yesterday.

She remembers the warmth bubbling in her chest from getting to hold him again, the relief that he was real and tangible and right in front of her, the crushing disappointment at the realisation that she had let him down.

And she was never good at dealing with disappointment.

So she avoided it. Avoided him.

She knows he’s trying to reach out to her, and it pains her every time she turns away. She can only imagine the hurt expression he tries to hide.

She doesn’t know how to face him, doesn’t know how to apologise. For making him spend time trying to figure out her powers that were all for naught. For failing to remember him when she was the one he was counting on. For somehow making him love her even though she doesn’t deserve his love at all.

Unfortunately while she can avoid interacting with Stiles, she can’t always avoid being in his vicinity. Sometimes when they are running all over town fighting creatures and saving their own skins, they question exactly how big their supposed small town is. But now she’s sitting in the stands, a few feet away from where the lacrosse field - and Stiles - is, and the town feels unnervingly _small_.

It’s not like she can tell Maila and Mason and Hayden and Corey that she can’t watch lacrosse practice because she doesn’t want Stiles to see her. Plus, she doesn’t want anyone to pick up her emotions, which will go haywire when she sees him in his jersey - the same one she found in his room. Her alpha is already suspicious - she’s seen him peering at her with curiosity and concern. Scott, bless him, won’t ask her about it (not directly at least, but he does keep asking if she is okay), but the others might.

She tries to be engrossed in an extensive research paper about epigenetics, but it’s hard to not pay attention to practice, and more importantly, Stiles, who, being the doof he is, manages to get yelled at by Coach every five minutes.

She ends up watching him over the top edge of the paper, averting her eyes whenever he glances her way.

* * *

It happened so fast.

He was playing defense in a shooting drill and was tackling a player. He probably mistimed his lunge, and ended up being thrown into the air, arcing  slightly before landing on his back. His head slammed into the back of his helmet, the sound echoing throughout his skull and muffling the yelling around him.

His back tingles, and somewhere in his muddled mind he briefly thinks that Scott is trying to take his pain - is he in pain? His head feels like it’s been stuffed with mothballs and doused in vinegar - fizzling aimlessly.

Then there’s a warmth in his hand where his glove should be, and he hears - clear as day - “ _Stiles_.”

* * *

She had jumped out of her seat before his body even hit the ground.

For a few moments, she stood there in shock, the forgotten book discarded at her feet (she wasn’t paying attention to what she was reading anyway). And then it slammed into her that he wasn’t moving and _he wasn’t getting up_.

Liam looked up when she gracelessly vaulted over the first few rows of seats to run onto the field. She thinks she might have shrieked, and the wolf probably heard her panicked voice.

Her booties were terrible for running on the uneven terrain, but it barely registered. All she could focus on was the unmoving body lying on the field - Stiles’ unmoving body, which was currently blocked from view by the gathering lacrosse players.

How she shoved the larger, taller players aside was a mystery. Perhaps she was powered by her _need_  to be next to Stiles. Before she knew it, she was sliding onto the ground next to him, across from Scott, who was carefully removing his friend’s helmet.

“Stiles,” she choked, tearing his glove off and twisting her hand into his.

His hand was limp in hers. He let out a low groan of “five more minss daaaa…” before his eyes were rolled back in their sockets. Lydia inhaled sharply as his head lolled to the side.

“Might have been a mild concussion,” Scott mumbled. “His helmet was on pretty loose.”

“God damn it, why do you all - these things are for your PRO-TEC-TION!” Coach yelled, waving his arms at the players. Then he leaned over the alpha. “Is he knocked out?”

“He’s not getting up.”

“Stiles please,” Lydia pleaded softly, tightening her hold on his hand. Her body pitched forward, and then she was sobbing onto his chest.

The consoling hand on her shoulder, the “He’s okay, he’s still breathing” from Malia - or was it Liam? - and the insistent “Martin, he’s not dead!” from Coach were all lost on her.

“Please get up,” she whispered into his jersey, burying her face in the material like she did those nights ago in his room. “You can’t - I can’t do this without you. Stiles I - ”

She sniffed, then, in a voice so soft she wasn’t sure even the werecreatures heard, she told him the one thing she still had not said.

“ _I love you_.”

* * *

He woke up in a dimly lit room. Stiles blinked his eyes, taking in the alabaster ceiling and two rows of lights. Only the one to the right was switched on.

Something was compressing around his left forearm, and when he turned his head he found the culprit to be Lydia. She was clutching his arm in a death grip, staring at her fingers.

“Hey,” he rasped. He curled his hand in an attempt to find hers.

Lydia’s head snapped up and towards him when she heard his voice.

“Stiles,” she gasped. “You woke up.” Her intonation briefly brought him back to the dark, damp lair beneath Eichen House, with blood and red wires and _you came back_.

She removes her hands from his arm, settling on the side of his cot and he immediately misses the contact. He makes to follow her, then falters at the last moment and pulls the lever that adjusts the bed, letting him sit halfway up.

His eyes scan their surroundings. They are in the sick bay next to the nurses’ office. He had only ever been here once, having passed out from a panic attack.

Last time, he woke up in the small room on his own. This time though, he had been pulled out of unconsciousness by _I would go out of my mind too_ and _don’t leave again_  and _please Stiles_. 

Most of all, he was chasing the one he heard right before he lost all sensory feeling and everything went dark.

“Did you mean it?” he asked. “What you said on the lacrosse field.”

“What I -” Lydia started, confused, then her face morphed into one of embarrassed horror.

“But you were concussed! You thought I was your dad! Then you passed out!” she exclaimed, clenching and unclenching the rail of the cot before she settled on just throwing her arms up in the air. 

“I’m so sorry,” she told him when she had calmed down. She had to force herself to breathe deeply and her cheeks were burning. “I didn’t mean to lay that on you. It’s just, I missed you, and all that time…I just felt like…like…”

“Hey,” he stopped her, taking her hands in his. “I know you already know this, but I love you too. I love you, always.”

A puff of breath escaped her lips when she smiled. She gave that same smile of hers - corners of her mouth tugging up, lips parted and curling in slightly - that he witnessed back at the start of junior year, on the floor of the locker room. Her eyes were big, bright and shining, even in the dim of the sick bay, and the lids fluttered as she slowly leaned towards him.

His lips parted as she approached, and he was breathing heavily through his open mouth in anticipation, but he forced his left hand to slide up to her cheek, stopping her when they were just inches apart.

“Not here,” he whispered into the space between them. “Not that I don’t want to do this,” he added, squeezing Lydia’s hand as she stilled and made to pull away, “but I don’t want our first official kiss to be here.”

Lydia sighed as her eyes softened. Her lips pressing together to smile at him again. She nodded, _okay_ , then tucked her head under his chin, nuzzling his neck.

“I thought you weren’t going to wake up,” she mumbled into his skin.

“I’m not leaving you,” he promised, stroking her hair. His words echoed hers three months ago. It made his heart pump faster and harder in his chest.

“Lydia,” he started. “I heard you. I could always hear you.”

She lifted her head, jade eyes wild and wide and questioning as they bore into his.

The arm that was stroking her head wraps around her shoulders and squeezes. “You brought me back.”

Lydia inhales audibly. “God, Stiles,” she breathes, “I really wanna kiss you.”

He sits up fully, leans forward and kisses her the crown of her head, pulls her to him as he gets out of the cot, their bodies pressing together. Her arms instinctively wind around his waist. She buries her face in his chest, lightly pressing her lips against the fabric of his jersey. He kisses her hair again.

“Then let’s get out of here.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this. I'm raspberrylimonade on tumblr and stlnskissmartin and twitter.
> 
> By the way, thank you for all the reviews and comments on all my works! I'm really heartened by the support.


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